Cleaning house

Volunteers spruce up Holbrook grounds

BY ERIK RADVON ERADVON@HOLDENLANDMARK.

Karla Bigelow works to clear brush on the grounds of the Holbrook House. The historic property, abandoned since 1991, is at the center of a fierce stalemate between the forces of development and those of conservation. Joyce Roberts photo. As limbs were felled and brush was cleared, memories of Alma Holbrook mingled freely with the pungent scent of apples from the trees all around her ancestral property.

"She drove a blue Buick Roadmaster, it used to be parked right out front here all the time," said Dick Williams as he took a quick break in the shade. Williams was one of about 15 volunteers who turned out on Saturday to toil away in the midday sun, cutting brush and clearing paths to spruce up the Holbrook House.

The property, located across the street from the Rural Cemetery on Main Street, has a history dating back to before the Revolutionary War. It was a tannery at one point in the 1740s, and later went on to become a farm. The Holbrook family moved onto the land in 1909, and Alma Holbrook resided there until her death in 1991.

Williams, like many longtime Rutland residents, can still recall seeing Mrs. Holbrook working in the yard and tending the gardens around her home.

"She wore a big, wide-rimmed hat," said Williams. "And she was a hardworking lady. I would always see her out here taking care of the place."

In the 16 years since Alma's passing, the house has been unoccupied and the grounds have become overgrown.

Saturday's cleanup was a joint venture between the Rutland Land Conservancy and the Trustees of Reservation to trim back some of the growth. The Trustees of Reservation is a non-profit agency that works to preserve land across Massachusetts, and, in a case of strange bedfellows, co-owns the Holbrook property along with real estate developer Clealand Blair.

"Alma left no will when she died," explained RLC president Cindy Trahan- Liptak. "The property went to her three nieces, who were Alma's closest relatives. Two of the nieces sold their shares to Blair, but the third opted not to take the money and instead donated her ownership to the Trustees of Reservation."

Since that donation, ownership of the property has been split, with Blair owning two-thirds and the Trustees owning the remaining third. The actual house itself is not of interest to the developer. Rather, it is the acreage surrounding the old home that makes it of high concern. Blair seeks to develop the land for residential housing while the Trustees want to preserve it.

Chris Rodstrom, who works for the Trustees and was on hand at Saturday's cleanup, hopes a deal can be worked out with Blair to save the Holbrook House before it deteriorates.

"As time goes by, it becomes less and less likely that we are going to be able to save this house," he said.

While action on the house itself looks to be far off in the future, the volunteers found plenty of other tasks on Saturday to tackle.

"Since we are in this stalemate of sorts with the house, we are trying to do what we can to preserve the grounds and also to open it up and make it more visible to people," Rodstrom said.

Besides the old house, the Holbrook property is also home to a series of trails and pathways lined with rustic stone walls. The property is open to the public and the volunteers hope their clean-up work will draw more people in to walk the trails.

The workers mowed tall grass, took down tree limbs, cleared brush, and removed vines from the stone walls. A giant apple tree in the front yard provided snacks for some and a sweet fragrance in the air for everyone else.

"This is just an awesome property," said Trahan-Liptak. "It's a gem for the town of Rutland."

As the volunteers continued to drag limbs and bag up brush, a newly constructed house across the street seemed to gaze upon the proceedings. It's sharp lines and bright paint stood in stark contrast to the Holbrook House, and perhaps served as a harbinger of its fate.